When I first was made to know, in no uncertain terms, that the earth and everything in it was vastly more sentient than I had ever imagined, I looked long and hard for writings that could shed more light on my experiences. Especially I looked for stuff by modern Westerners.

Mostly I found little. Most of us Westerners have not so immersed ourselves into natural processes and rhythms as to encounter this aspect of reality very often, and those who have rarely write books. David Abram, Jeremy Narby and Tom Harmer helped me significantly, but did little to reconnect this reality with the modern world around me.

Jensen had achieved this feat while fully recognizing the modern world’s intense psychopathology in denying this reality. He could give clear expression to the enormous pain those of us who have been privileged to see this dimension of reality feel in our day to day lives as well as the sociopathic institutions that perpetuate it. As my favorite environmental writer, Aldo Leopold, put it, we walk and live in a world of wounds, wounds that have gotten deeper and more festering since Leopold wrote.

Jensen has since produced a number of big books, and I have not read them all because when I started another, it seemed simply to recapitulate his denunciation of the modern world and our need to resist it. So what follows may be out of date or based on inadequate knowledge of his analysis. If so I’d appreciate someone setting me straight. (I figure that will be inevitable on this site…)

Jensen argues that civilization as such is the problem, especially cities, that things were far better when we lived as hunter gatherers, and that civilization is on an ultimate death spiral where the survivors will again be forced to live in the manner we evolved to live. And we and the world will be the better for it.

I want to take issue with what I take to be one central aspect of his analysis as I understand it so far.

I read Jensen as arguing that hunting and gathering was sustainable, and somehow we went astray when we began agriculture, and moved into cities and such. (I agree that much about this process was bad for most people at the time and for a long time thereafter. I have another issue to explore.)

Hunting and gathering (H&G) societies that have survived into modern times have been pushed to the outer limits of where people can live. Even so, they often live well most of the time. But for thousands of years they have been forced off of the easiest parts of the earth to live on by more numerous agricultural peoples. So H&G peoples’ ability to live in harmony with their environment is both admirable and absolutely essential if they are to survive where they now live. The Inuit, for example, do not live with a very big margin of error.

We know that many thousands of years ago H&G societies were all that existed. We also know from studies of Indians of the Pacific Northwest, that when the area is ecologically rich enough, H&G cultures can develop permanent communities, wide differences in status, slavery, and apparently frequent if small wars. In the Northwest these conditions were made possible by the return of salmon, continually enriching their environment beyond what the immediate area could support.

Some months ago I posted a discussion about Gobekli Tepe where agriculture may have begun. It was certainly close to where it did begin in the Middle East in both place and time. The wonderful rock structures created there required a large population, and the evidence exists that permanent villages surrounded the area near these structures. At the time the region was rich in animal life, as the carvings depict animals that have not been found there for millennia. That ecological richness has been gone for a long time.

Such a large settled population living off the land would have gradually exerted enormous pressure on the ecosystem. If they did not control their numbers, in time they would have degraded it. If other regions nearby were also settled, the population could not have simply migrated to better hunting grounds.

Gradually moving from a degraded hunting and gathering evironment, to increasing reliance of horticulture, then to agriculture, would have been a most rasonable solution for those facing this problem. But the farther down that road a society traveled, the more difficult it would have been to go back. The only agricutural societies I know of that returned to a H&G way of life were on the American plains. The arrival of the horse opened up a whole new way of life ti Indians in an area that had been largely inaccessible to them. Many left the fields to hunt on the open plains.

Another example:The archaeological evidence suggests that when melting glaciers flooded land between what is now England and France, people living there were forced to move into already settled areas. The refugees could have been accommodated, but only by increasing pressure on the ecosystem leading again to agriculture. Or wars could have broken out, with some defending their homes against others seeking new homes as rising waters drowned their former ones. At least the latter seems to have happened, based on evidence that those killed by violence as the waters were rising increasingly included women and children.

Therefore the evidence strongly indicates that necessity rather than choice led to agriculture, triggering the changes that Jensen describes so well.

If ecological disaster forces a return to H&G ways of life, the cycle will begin anew, in a yet more degraded environment. And maybe that is how it will be. But then there is no truly sustainable way of life for critters such as us.

Jensen has written that cities are not ecologically sustainable on the land they occupy. But neither are ant hills or bee hives. That by itself is no argument against them.

What cities do that holds hope for us is to make it possible for people to learn quickly from one another, for ideas to circulate and be developed. Much of this is noise of course, but not all. Adaptation through culture is vastly more rapid than biological adaptation, except for some bacteria, viruses, and perhaps some very adaptable animals and plants, like flies, rats, and dandelions. And adaptation speeds up as cultural connections are made, at least to a point.

Jensen is right that adaptation can be stymied or perverted by big institutions that benefit from the status quo, as we see today with financial institutions that have caused our crisis but “are too big to fail’ so we must bail the crooks out. He is right that resistance to these and other corporate psychopaths is necessary if we are to survive. But the cities he criticizes seem to me absolutely essential as places of learning, genuine adaptation, and resistance if we are to have any future worth looking forward to.

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About a Pagan’s Blog

Gus diZerega is a political scientist/theorist with a PhD from the University of California at Berkeley. While living and working as an artist and craftsperson to finance his degree, he met and later studied with teachers in NeoPaganism, the earth religions more generally, and shamanic healing.

Democratic Forest Trusts (PDF)in Watson, Alan; Dean, Liese; Sproull, Janet, comps. 2006. Science and stewardship to protect and sustain wilderness values: Eighth World Wilderness Congress Symposium; 2005 September 30-October 6; Anchorage, AK.Democratic trusts with leadership elected by citizen-members promise to solve many of the problems afflicting both traditional government and corporate ownership of forestlands.Â This article explores these issues in some depth.Complexity and the Dream of Human Control of Eco-Systems (PDF)in Watson, Alan; Dean, Liese; Sproull, Janet, comps. 2006. Science and stewardship to protect and sustain wilderness values: Eighth World Wilderness Congress Symposium; 2005 September 30-October 6; Anchorage, AK.The title captures it.Â I then explore the kinds of institutions compatible with both nature and the modern world that are implied from this analysis.Rethinking the Obvious: Modernity and Living Respectfully With Nature (PDF)The Trumpeter: Journal of Ecosophy, Winter, 1997.Modernity is usually considered a wrong turn in terms of respect for and sustaining the environment.Â I argue the reality is more complex, for modernity has freed us from personal dependence on agriculture, ended the economic value of children, radically reduced the likelihood of large scale wat, and shifted much production to intellectual rather than material capital.Â This partially decouples society from nature, which gives us important opportunities as well as problems.Towards an Ecocentric Political Economy (PDF)The Trumpeter, Fall, 1996.This paper begins my effort at showing how liberal modernity can be harmonized with an ecocentric perspective on our relationship with the natural world.Â It is a corrective to much “free market environmental” literature that sacrifices Nature to money as well as to anti-liberal attacks by well-meaning but economically naÃ¯ve environmentalists.Unexpected Harmonies: Self-Organization in Liberal Modernity and Ecology (PDF)The Trumpeter, Journal of Ecosophy, 10:1, Winter 1993This is my initial paper exploring how what I term ‘evolutionary liberal’ thought can be an important means by which society and nature can be brought into greater harmony.Â The other Trumpeter papers build on it.Deep Ecology and Liberalism: The Greener Implications of Evolutionary Liberalism (PDF)Review of Politics, Fall, 1996.Liberal thought and deep ecology are usually regarded as mutually exclusive. But the “evolutionary” tradition offers a way to integrate the two through commonalties in the work of David Hume, Michael Polanyi, Arne Naess, and Aldo Leopold, providing a stronger foundation for liberalism while strengthening the case for an ecocentric ethic.(Related subjects: Ecology)Saving Western Towns: A Jeffersonian Green Proposal (PDF)in Writers on the Range, Karl Hess and John Baden, eds., University Press of Colorado, 1998.Developmental pressures in the rural and small town West involve three groups: long term residents, new arrivals, and environmentalists. Today their interests often conflict. This conflict is in part the outcome of institutions which prevent harmonizing competing interests. The concept of developmental trusts, both for rural regions and for small communities offers a means whereby these interests can be harmonized for the benefit of all concerned.(Related subjects: Politics)Social Ecology, Deep Ecology, and Liberalism (PDF)Critical Review, 6: 2-3, 1992.Murray Bookchin is considered a leading radical environmental theorist. However, his analysis is incapable of leading humankind towards a more respectful and sustainable relationship with the natural world. Criticisms of Bookchin from both the deep ecology and evolutionary liberal perspective complement one another, pointing the way towards a better understanding of how modernity relates to the environment.The paper as a whole offers an early discussion of issues that are more clearly addressed in later papers, particularly Deep Ecology and Liberalism (1996) and the three Trumpeter articles in 1997, 1996, and 1993. However, there are other ideas in the article which have not been developed more thoroughly elsewhere.

Scale and Magnanimity in Liberal Theory: Reflections on Civic Liberalism (PDF)Critical Review, 1-2; 2003Thomas Spragens argues realist, libertarian, egalitarian, and identity liberals all grasp valid political insights, but develop them in unacceptably one-sided ways. By returning to the concerns of early liberals Spragens clarifies these insights’ role, developing a liberal theory incorporating autonomy, equality, civic friendship, and civic virtue as basic qualities. His effort is weakened by insufficient appreciation of the role scale plays in liberal theory and confusions over civic friendship. Appreciation of Hayekian insights and a more nuanced treatment of affective elements in politics would make for a more viable theory. However, his approach holds promise for improving liberal theory.

Why Organizations Lie (PDF)A paper commissioned by The Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment, Bozeman, MT.Big organizations, public and private alike, institutionalize an amoral approach to their environment. The problems that arise from organizational dishonesty can only be ameliorated by understanding their causes, and institutionalizing counter measures.

Liberalism, Democracy, and the State: Reclaiming the Unity of Liberal Politics (PDF)Review of Politics, Fall, 2001.Today Liberalism is deeply divided between “classical” and “progressive” traditions. Both treat democracies as states, and thereby go astray. “Classical” liberals make a long series of bad predictions that never come true while “progressive” liberals misidentify democratic equality and often devise self-defeating public policy initiatives. Neither identifies the most basic division within liberal modernity. Both would be more successful, and less bitterly opposed, if they realized democracies are not states but self-organizing systems.

Democracy as a Spontaneous Order (PDF)Critical Review, Spring, 1989, pp. 206-240.Classical liberal thinkers have long been distrustful of political democracy. Yet in practice, liberalization of societies has also involved their democratization. This paradox is resolved when we recognize that democracies are, in F. A. Hayek’s terms, spontaneous orders like the other liberal institutions of science and the market. Hayek and other classical liberals failed to grasp this insight because of their misunderstanding of the character of democratic politics.

Social Ecology, Deep Ecology, and Liberalism (PDF)Critical Review, 6: 2-3, 1992.Murray Bookchin is considered a leading radical environmental theorist. However, his analysis is incapable of leading humankind towards a more respectful and sustainable relationship with the natural world. Criticisms of Bookchin from both the deep ecology and evolutionary liberal perspective complement one another, pointing the way towards a better understanding of how modernity relates to the environment.

The paper as a whole offers an early discussion of issues that are more clearly addressed in later papers, particularly Deep Ecology and Liberalism (1996) and the three Trumpeter articles in 1997, 1996, and 1993. However, there are other ideas in the article which have not been developed more thoroughly elsewhere.

Equality, Self-Government, and Democracy (PDF)Western Political Quarterly, now The Political Research Quarterly, Summer, 1987.Robert Dahl is widely considered the most influential contemporary American democratic theorist. Here I criticize Dahl’s model of democracy, arguing that it is internally incoherent, ethically confused, and misleading as a guide to empirical research.

Federalism, Self-Organization, and the Dissolution of the State (PDF)Telos, no. 100, Summer, 1994.Viewing representative democracies as self-organizing systems gives us a new perspective on the perennial question of whether centralized or decentralized and federal democratic systems can best serve the public interest. Democracies have fluid borders and local isle-governing institutions can often have more in common with neighboring local units in other countries. With the end of large scale threats against democratic governments and growing complexity in their societies, the future of novel local rearrangements is bright.

Elites and Democratic Theory: Insights From the Self-Organizing Model (PDF)Review of Politics, June, 1991.The self-organizing systems model of democracy offers a fresh perspective on political elites. It shows that they, as in other such systems, perform essential as well as controversial and dangerous roles. This model corrects confusions in both “elitist” and “pluralist” models of liberal democracy.

Market Non-Neutrality: Systemic Bias in Spontaneous OrdersCritical Review, Winter, 1997.Many libertarian and conservative scholars argue the market is a neutral means for facilitating human exchanges. In fact the market process actively shapes the kinds of values it rewards through successful exchanges. Similar biases exist in other self-organizing systems. Once we understand this we will recognize the necessity of putting limits on and particular spontaneous order.

Saving Western Towns: A Jeffersonian Green Proposal (PDF)in Writers on the Range, Karl Hess and John Baden, eds., University Press of Colorado, 1998.Developmental pressures in the rural and small town West involve three groups: long term residents, new arrivals, and environmentalists. Today their interests often conflict. This conflict is in part the outcome of institutions which prevent harmonizing competing interests. The concept of developmental trusts, both for rural regions and for small communities offers a means whereby these interests can be harmonized for the benefit of all concerned.(Related subjects: Community)

Social Ecology, Deep Ecology, and Liberalism (PDF)Review of Politics, Fall, 1996.Liberal thought and deep ecology are usually regarded as mutually exclusive. But the “evolutionary” tradition offers a way to integrate the two through commonalties in the work of David Hume, Michael Polanyi, Arne Naess, and Aldo Leopold, providing a stronger foundation for liberalism while strengthening the case for an ecocentric ethic.(Related subjects: Ecology)Saving Western Towns: A Jeffersonian Green Proposal (PDF)in Writers on the Range, Karl Hess and John Baden, eds., University Press of Colorado, 1998.Developmental pressures in the rural and small town West involve three groups: long term residents, new arrivals, and environmentalists. Today their interests often conflict. This conflict is in part the outcome of institutions which prevent harmonizing competing interests. The concept of developmental trusts, both for rural regions and for small communities offers a means whereby these interests can be harmonized for the benefit of all concerned.(Related subjects: Politics)

Nature Religion and the Modern World: The Returning Relevance of Pagan Spirituality (PDF)Sacred Cosmos: CUUPS Journal of Liberal Religious Paganism, Vol. 1, No. 1, November 2000Nature religions make up one of two basic categories of human spirituality; finding the sacred manifested within the world rather than emphasizing that the world is in some way radically defective. Today the nature religions are once again growing in importance, largely because they are very well suited for people’s spiritual concerns in post-modern times.

Ken Wilber’s Critique of Deep Ecology and Nature Religion (PDF)The Trumpeter: Journal of Ecosophy, Fall, 1996.Ken Wilber’s Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, among other things, attacks deep ecology and nature religion as spiritually and psychologically regressive threats to human well being. I argue here that Wilber’s criticisms attack a one sided caricature of these perspectives. I show that in fact deep ecology and nature religion offer essential insights for enhancing the quality of human life, both materially and spiritually. Since our debate, Ken Wilber and I have been discussing these issues privately. I am happy to report that the gulf between our positions has narrowed dramatically. So dramatically that, along with a fellow Wiccan scholar, Don Frew, we have issued a joint statement on Nature Religion and Deep Ecology. Also posted here is a record of the most important correspondence between Ken and myself over these issues. To find this information click here . Then link to the Reading Room from there. (Related subjects: Ecology)

Love, Suffering and Evil: A Neopagan View (PDF)The Pomegranate, 7: Imbolc, 1999.Pagan spirituality takes a very different approach to questions of suffering, evil, and love than do most spiritual approaches common to our society. This article argues that both suffering and evil can be understood as “natural” results of a material world manifested by an immanent and transcendent source of perfect love. They are not evidence of fundamental flaws. Nor are they fundamental to reality. When adequately understood they often enhance our ability to manifest love and compassion.

Gus diZerega is a political scientist/theorist with a PhD from the University of California at Berkeley. While living and working as an artist and craftsperson to finance his degree, he met and later studied with teachers in NeoPaganism, the earth religions more generally, and shamanic healing.

His spiritual studies took him far from academia’s libraries into seasonal Wiccan celebrations, encounters with Pagan deities, and out into solitary fasts in the California desert, alone on remote beaches or isolated high on mountains doing vision quests. He was blessed with three very good teachers, Don Frew, Timothy White, and Antonio Costa e Silva (now Segyu Choepal Rinpoche).

The past 25 years Gus has aimed to bring together the disparate strands of modern social science, Pagan spirituality, and shamanic spiritual practices. He has done so through his own practice and through his teaching and writing.

Now that Barack Obama has been elected President, Gus aims to focus more on his spiritual writing instead of trying to prevent the triumph of what he feels are the moral monsters that long controlled the U.S. government and still dominate the Republican Party.